Turn It Up

Louris stretches out, goes back, with help from old friends

March 28, 2008|By Greg Kot

This is shaping up as a banner year for Jayhawks fans, even though the Jayhawks broke up several years ago.

The two main songwriters in the Minneapolis band, Gary Louris and Mark Olson, have reconciled and have already recorded an album together. It's their first songwriting collaboration since Olson left the Jayhawks more than a decade ago and should be released this year, Louris says. In addition, Louris has just put out his first solo album, "Vagabonds" (Rykodisc), and launched his first solo tour, which brings him to Metro on Friday.

The Jayhawks were one of the best, and most underappreciated, bands in America, while releasing seven studio albums in 20 years. Their blend of country and rock presaged the alternative-country movement of the early '90s. After Olson left in 1995, Louris began to explore a wider range of styles, touching on everything from German art rock to British Invasion-style songcraft.

"It wasn't like I ever felt the Jayhawks had pinned me down and I was all of sudden free to do what I wanted," Louris says. "I was pretty much free to do what I wanted within the Jayhawks. But patching things up with Mark, and getting back to being friends with him, really put me on a new course.

"We toured together in 2006-07, just two guys and two guitars and it sounded great. More powerful than a stack of Marshalls. We decided we wanted to write some songs together, and the next step was to record them. Mark was very wary of big record labels, big producers and big studio budgets. He'd made a lot of homegrown, organic records after he left the Jayhawks. I was still a part of that game of big record company, big record budget, so I wanted to find someplace where we were comfortable together. We needed a bridge between us."

That bridge proved to be Black Crowes singer Chris Robinson, who had known the Jayhawks since both bands were signed to the same record label in the early '90s. Olson and Louris knocked out an album of new songs in eight days with Robinson producing -- a fraction of the time it took to record such Jayhawks albums as "Hollywood Town Hall" and "Tomorrow the Green Grass."

Louris jumped from that collaborative project to his own solo album, again with Robinson producing. "I knew after that I wanted to make a record based on my acoustic guitar and my voice, because I'd never really done that before," he says. "Playing with Mark, and becoming really obsessed with finger-picking on the acoustic guitar, just led naturally to a quieter, more intimate style of songwriting."

The singer-guitarist and Robinson convened with a makeshift band in Los Angeles, and things quickly gelled. Five days of rehearsals and eight days of recording produced 19 songs, 10 of which ended up on the album.

"It sounds cliched and corny, but it was an ethereal, sparkling, weird, magical thing floating around between the keyboards and the steel guitar, and all the cool things our bass player was coming up with," Louris enthuses. "The band had an immediate sound and it inspired us to make some of these songs grow a little larger than we originally planned."

Yet Louris' original vision remains intact in the intimacy of the lyrics, some of the most richly detailed and introspective of his career. In songs such as "True Blue" and the title track, Louris' high, lonesome-sounding voice embodies the album's bittersweet themes of aging, loss and acceptance.

"I worked harder on my lyrics than ever," he said. "This time I decided to write six verses and three different choruses for each song, and choose the best ones to sing. I went into it with the same feeling I had around the making of 'Sound of Lies' [the first Jayhawks album without Olson in 1997]. It was like, 'Let the chips fall where they may.' I had stuff I wanted to express. People may hate it, but I can't worry about that."

Louris chuckles. "That's why it was so good to have Chris Robinson around. He's been a loyal friend for years, and he brings a positive attitude and energy, which are things I lack. Being positive is not something I was born with. I tend to look at what I don't have more than what I do have. Some people think that Chris is all about, 'Let's burn incense; everything's great, so let's party.' He'll tell me when something sucks. But when you're trying something new, it's great to have a guy like that next to you, giving you confidence."